Founding MENA #32
Welcome to the Founding MENA newsletter, bringing you the top stories from across the region every week.
I hope you find the newsletter insightful, but I’m always open to feedback and suggestions. Let’s get into it!
💰 Investment Rounds
- 🇸🇦 AILA raised $3M in pre-Series A led by Rua Growth Fund. See more here.
- 🇦🇪 HeyBreez raised $2.5M in seed led by Lunara Partners. See more here.
- 🇦🇪 Tax Star closed $1.75M in seed from angel investors. See more here.
📰 Startup News
A Dubai-based SaaS studio just hit $18 million ARR in 26 months with 14 people and no external capital raised.
Rahul Lakhaney founded Enrich Labs in June 2024. At $18 million of ARR, Enrich Labs is generating approximately $1.29 million ARR per full-time employee.
The B2B SaaS industry median is around $193,000. The top-quartile benchmark is approximately $279,000. Public SaaS companies' median is around $395,000.
Enrich Labs is running at more than three times the top-quartile benchmark with a team of 14.
The model behind the growth is incredibly lean and focused. Each of the four products (enrich.so, InboxKit, sendkit.ai, and multiply.sh) runs on a dedicated three-person team: one engineer, one growth engineer, one product lead.
Distribution is engineered in from day one. The operating assumption is that in the AI era, reaching customers is the constraint and not building the product.
The customer base is almost entirely US, UK, and European, including Brex, AltaHQ, Artisan, NoBroker.
As AI continues to reduce software engineering costs, the next competitive advantage is distribution. Enrich Labs is building that infrastructure for itself and is now embedding it into multiply.sh so other founders can do the same.
Read more here.
Exits MENA has acquired Avanz Capital Egypt.
Founded in 2022 by the legendary Mohamed Aboulnaga, Ayman El Tanbouly, and Ahella El Saban, Exits MENA has spent three years building a specialist platform for M&A, fundraising, and investment readiness for startups and SMEs across the region.
Exits MENA operates in more than seven global markets, building 75+ global partnerships, running three investment readiness programmes, and supporting more than 2,000 businesses.
The gap they kept running into: they could advise founders on capital strategy but couldn't deploy it themselves.
Avanz Capital Egypt, led by CEO and Managing Director Haytham Wagih Ali, closes that gap.
ACE is a regulated private equity and asset management firm with a mandate focused specifically on Egyptian SMEs and the country's PE and VC ecosystem.
With initial FRA approval secured, Exits MENA now holds a fully integrated financial group: advisory, private equity, and asset management under one umbrella.
The rebranding to Exits Manara is the next step. The platform will continue managing Manara 1, an existing fund of funds targeting SMEs, and will launch Manara 2 for Export Investments, focused on helping mid-sized Egyptian exporters expand internationally.
According to the World Bank, SMEs in MENA receive approximately 8% of total bank credit, compared with 22% in high-income economies. The Arab world's SME finance gap stands at approximately $123 billion.
Exits MENA has been advising founders trying to close that gap for three years. Now it has the infrastructure to help close it.
Read more here.
📰 Other News
CIB Egypt has received preliminary approval from the Central Bank of Egypt to establish yomo, a fully digital bank backed by Egypt's leading private-sector bank.
yomo joins a small but growing cohort of CBE-approved digital banks. onebank (Banque Misr) and Easy Bank (QNB Egypt) preceded it, but the CIB backing is what makes yomo compelling.
If onebank represented state-owned banking going digital, yomo represents Egypt's most successful private-sector bank making the same move.
CIB brings 50 years of banking infrastructure, regulatory credibility, and an existing corporate and retail customer base.
yomo sits on top of that foundation and targets the segments that CIB's traditional model doesn't serve as efficiently: mass consumer, small business, and Egyptians at home and abroad who want a fully digital experience.
The next steps are technology validation, cybersecurity testing, regulatory compliance, and customer journey optimisation before commercial launch, subject to final approval.
Read more here.
You can now book a fully driverless robotaxi in Dubai on the Uber app.
Baidu’s Apollo Go is live in Dubai!
This is the first time Uber's multi-partner autonomous vision has come to life on public roads.
Dubai is the launchpad. The plan is to scale to thousands of Apollo Go vehicles across Uber's global network.
Open the Uber app in Umm Suqeim or Jumeirah, request an UberX or Uber Comfort, and you may be matched with an Apollo Go RT6, Baidu's sixth-generation purpose-built robotaxi.
The numbers behind Apollo Go are serious. 28 cities globally. 350 million autonomous kilometres accumulated. 240 million of those fully driverless.
With 30+ AV partners and millions of autonomous trips completed annually, Uber is positioning itself as the marketplace that all self-driving cars ride on.
Read more here.
🤝🏼 Tools for Founders
Founding MENA has partnered with CapQuest, MENA’s leading equity management platform.
CapQuest’s automatic SAFE tracker is a game-changer. Upload all your SAFEs at once and it instantly models dilution, tracks valuations, and turns fundraising scenarios from a spreadsheet nightmare into something you can run in minutes.
All of our readers can get 20% off their first year with CapQuest using the code: foundingmena20.
That’s all for this week, thanks! Sam.
First published 24 Aug 2026 on Substack
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